Game Intro

hmm... you could try doing a freshnel falloff so that the planet is only bright on the lit side and use a glow for the atmosphere on the lit side. maybe similar to these. The maps I used are all procedual in 3dsMAX quite some time ago.

I have got a fresnel falloff Though I'm not using 3dsmax so I'm tweaking and learning at the same time.The atmosphere is there its just a case of tweaking it to get it looking photorealistic and constraining it enough so it doesn't affect the avenger model. Its all about the lighting

BTW I like the pics. Very atmospheric.

Ancalagon, don't worry about the script for the cutscenes. I'm not the only one that's working on intro's. The focus of my efforts has changed from the initial script above to the other cut scenes. IE the Earth to Mars avenger cutscene and the end movie cutscene. I've spent the last few months researching movie techniques, shot composition, storyboarding and visual storytelling (hence why its seemed that I've not doing much work) so don't worry I'm on top of it and it will be pertinent and will rival anything James Cameron or Ridley Scott could come up with.

The script at the top, I am still working on but as I said this is a pet project and shouldn't be viewed as canon for inclusion into the game. Its more of a portfolio item. Hence why I haven't submitted it for review.

The other cutscenes I will submit for review and yes Jim I will submit the storyboard for approval before I commit to rendering it (I'm not into wasting precious rendering time ).

At the moment I want to get things looking right so please guys don't defocus the thread with this just yet. Thanks.

hmm... you could try doing a freshnel falloff so that the planet is only bright on the lit side and use a glow for the atmosphere on the lit side. maybe similar to these. The maps I used are all procedual in 3dsMAX quite some time ago.

I have got a fresnel falloff Though I'm not using 3dsmax so I'm tweaking and learning at the same time.The atmosphere is there its just a case of tweaking it to get it looking photorealistic and constraining it enough so it doesn't affect the avenger model. Its all about the lighting

BTW I like the pics. Very atmospheric.

Ancalagon, don't worry about the script for the cutscenes. I'm not the only one that's working on intro's. The focus of my efforts has changed from the initial script above to the other cut scenes. IE the Earth to Mars avenger cutscene and the end movie cutscene. I've spent the last few months researching movie techniques, shot composition, storyboarding and visual storytelling (hence why its seemed that I've not doing much work) so don't worry I'm on top of it and it will be pertinent and will rival anything James Cameron or Ridley Scott could come up with.

The script at the top, I am still working on but as I said this is a pet project and shouldn't be viewed as canon for inclusion into the game. Its more of a portfolio item. Hence why I haven't submitted it for review.

The other cutscenes I will submit for review and yes Jim I will submit the storyboard for approval before I commit to rendering it (I'm not into wasting precious rendering time ).

At the moment I want to get things looking right so please guys don't defocus the thread with this just yet. Thanks.

you might have to render in layers. Eg hide the ships and render the planet background and then composite the ship on top to keep the glows from bleeding.

Going back to blurred planet texture, I think you could use that like a focus length effect, couldn't you? The ship comes in sharp but the distant background is burry?

As to the story, perhaps the alien ship lands and some people are mutilated or buildings are destroyed, and when the ufo is returning is when it's intercepted? Those shots look great guys, I've always liked the sun peeking out from behind the planet too.

Going back to blurred planet texture, I think you could use that like a focus length effect, couldn't you? The ship comes in sharp but the distant background is burry?

As to the story, perhaps the alien ship lands and some people are mutilated or buildings are destroyed, and when the ufo is returning is when it's intercepted? Those shots look great guys, I've always liked the sun peeking out from behind the planet too.

brumeor, the shots I posted were for referance. They cannot be used in Xenocide primarily because the ship designs I used there as well as the first shot are from Starships Unlimited Divided Galaxies.

I understand, I meant the concept's angles and such would be sweet to use as an option here, just redone for Xenocide using the work Deimos is doing. You could use the same earth texture Deimos currently has with the camera way out from the planet but moving in. Just before the texture starts to blur, you have the ufo move into view, and the camera shifts to it. As the earth texture blurs it would appear due to the camera's focal length if that's the correct term. For shots where only part of the planet is visible up close, you could use a partial model with a piece of the higher res texture on it perhaps to save rendering time?

Vaaish, great minds think alike. I was considering doing the preliminary setup with everthing visible to check everything looks right and then rendering it in seperate passes. Once they had rendered I was going to composite them together and fingers crossed we have a kick donkey looking movie

Breu, Vaaish could use my Eath textures buuut the one you see in the pics above is 35mb and I'm sure Vaaish wouldn't appreicate me sending him it
Let alone sending him my final rendering map (see above for size).

As for focal lengths, depth of field focus lengths and so on I will be using them if nothing more than to give the sense of scale. I'm toying with gong for a steady cam kind of look (used to great effect in the TV series "The Shield") for focussing in on the craft. It'll be a lot of work to get that effect but I think it will be worth it

Razzed pilot interrupts with a intermittant signal on radar. 747 crew double check their own radar, but see nothing. (reporting via radio)Some more friendly harassment about seeing things, dreamingabout new wife rather than paying attention to flying.

//cut to overhead shot of the three planes, big 747-style jet flanked by 2 fighters

Bolt of light from offscreen strikes one, then other escort. Both vanish in balls of flame. Frantic radio traffic from 747 pilots trying to contact escorts, until two medium scouts take up flanking positions recently occupied by fighter jets. Alien radio transmission (obviously alien by voice) orders leader on plane to submit to alien rule, or be destroyed. After this, a large scout is seen, behind and benath the 747. Leader gets on radio, and refuses.Third scout blows out one engine (747s have 4, and can fly on 2). Screams, etc from plane.Leader still refuses, second engine is blown. Leader in brave voice makes stirring statement about not giving in.

//zoom to close up on large scout. we see the charge build up in the plasma cannon (twinkle in the barrel, glow, bubble of energy at mouth of cannon, typical anime style thing).Then large scout blows up. Up through the debris blasts an Avenger, x-corps logo prominant.

//Pull back to see all aircraft from above, in bright sunlightAvenger takes out med scouts too, and settles along side 747. Various radio chatter between crafts, reaasuring 747 crew, and offering X-corps escort.Leader says something thanking Avenger crew & x-corps in general. Lot's of "we're saved 'cause X-corps is here" type stuff.

//large round shadow moves over two aircraft. Camera ange rotates out to the side, //showing the two human craft, and a huge alien battle ship moving in above them./Cut to black.

-The Captain

"...you're always afraid you'll lose control and wake up some morning with a half-built time machine and a plan to go back in time and pants Hitler."- A Miracle of Science

I'm not sure I like your idea Cpt. Boxershorts, I would rather see something more akin to the original intro.

Here is a rough idea of what I mean.

You see a large ufo floating above a city (it is a sectoid terrorship, sectoid because that is what is readily thought of when the word alien is mentioned... )

You see something (could be beam or landing pod) hit the city

Cut to sectoids slaughtering civilians.

Cut to an military base (it is xcom actually) an interceptor squadron (3-4) is launching. You hear something to the tune of "Alert! City under attack, Interceptors scramble! Transports deploy!" (with associated warning klaxons.) In addition, you see troops loading into a skyranger.

All these craft launch.

The interceptors shoot down the terrorship (with avalanches) while the skyranger lands, and xcom troops start pouring out of it. Now it is the aliens who are getting their a$$es kicked.

Fade to Xenocide logo.

I'm only partially inactive. I can still be reached at cpl.facehugger@gmail.com, and via PM. Preferably the former.

Here's a small anim of the above pics with with the lighting fixed. The avenger is in there and a silly little sound fx to break the silence. Yeah I know it sounds daft.

Sorry to non windows users but I don't have anything to encode with other than MS's movie maker atm.

Hmmm. Interesting. I like the pan in from the side but I'm not too keen on the camera bouncing around. Maybe some post processing targeting effects to give the impression of an alien probe scanning could account for the movement. For more on this check out the Battlezone II intro. Also the Avenger is very hard to see until it alomst passes the viewer, how about more light on it and slow down the movement to make it more visable. Final thing I see are the lens flares for exhaust. Is there any way to control the streak direction and size? I think they might be a little more convincing if the streak wasn't as large. For referance on theis look at Titan AE if my memory serves me. Beyond that it's looking like a good start.

Well, my only problems with Cpt. Boxershorts' idea was that it didn't really indicate ground combat, and I felt that the aliens demanding surrender was rather cliched. Isn't that what all aliens do? You should make them just so evil that they don't give you a chance to surrender. Imo.

And mine was only a very very rough idea of what I thought it should be.

I'm only partially inactive. I can still be reached at cpl.facehugger@gmail.com, and via PM. Preferably the former.

Firstly for you guys arguing over what kind of intro is best, please stop.
Its pointless arguing over the merits of whether intro script a or b is better because we don't have the resources available to make the kind of intro's you're arguing about. Its great that you're exercising your imaginations and yeah I agree that a kick donkey intro would be good but there are far more important things to be worrying about right now. I am still learning the vast quantity of information needed to produce even a half decent looking camera movements as Vaaish pointed out so talking about vast ground wars and the like is just arguing for the sake of it and defocussing the technical nature of the thread.

The script I wrote at the top was with my learning process in mind as well as giving possibly giving the project something nice to have as an intro. So if you really must discuss intro's please bear in mind that for every element in the intro means not only extra modelling but also lighting animation and so on and so on.
K.i.s.s. please.

With that said, Vaaish. I know what you mean about the camera bouncing around. What its supposed to be showing is the avenger coming out of the atmosphere and tracking it out but it didn't show up as I would have liked. I like the idea of the post processing. Or maybe I'll just redo it so that its a simpler pan. The other thing I'll fix at a later point is the frame jerkiness issue. I'm not sure whether that's an encoding issue or whether its because I rendered it at 24fps but thats something to look into as well.

As for the lens flares, well yeah they were a bit on the overkill side but that's easily tweaked. Lighting controls are very flexible in C4d. Again the lighting for the avenger needs brightining up as there are three point lights on it so they just need a tweak.

Jim, its a work in progress. you don't honestly think I'd submit that as a submission for a final render? No its just to show I am doing something.

The script I wrote at the top was with my learning process in mind as well as giving possibly giving the project something nice to have as an intro. So if you really must discuss intro's please bear in mind that for every element in the intro means not only extra modelling but also lighting animation and so on and so on.K.i.s.s. please.

Jim, its a work in progress. you don't honestly think I'd submit that as a submission for a final render? No its just to show I am doing something.

Yeah, I know, I was mentioning the same thing Vaaish is.

Yes, you are right, there isn't the resources to do something really fancy. What there is the resources for is an air battle, it is no different to the effects used so far ( well, maybe a little different ) but modelling humans realistically with facial expressions etc. is too much work IMO. That's why I was suggesting the air battle one, I think that one is worth looking at.

Sweet! I love the renders and the movie and especially the storylines that have been brought up so far. I do think Deimos' is the best compromise between something awesome and something doable (remember the hardest thing to render is a human being). Maybe, before all is said and done, add a shot from the UFO obliterating a little cabin in the mountains as it passes and I'd be happy.

Thanks FTG. Getting a human render actually isn't the hardest thing. It is I'd say the second toughest thing to model and render a realistic human. For me the number one thing would be animating realistically. Even the slightest defect in the way a human animation moves and the whole thing looks unrealistic. Though I am practicing

If we can use MOCAP we should, but also, tho I'm sure the pro's amogst us already know this, the bones have to be positioned in the exact same way as human joints rather than having them centrallised as is the way normally. I remember reading something about it in Gamasutra, it is more difficult but if done right can produce better effects.